In 2003, there was a fire in the San Bernardino Mountains near Lake Arrowhead. It was called the Old Fire. One of the many things it destroyed was a Boy Scout Camp. I was there this weekend.
One of the few times in my life I felt particularly underprivileged was the first time I went to Lake Arrowhead. It turned out that for some reason we wound up at one of the Boy Scout camps there. I remember that it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, looking very much to me like a Wild West fort and town. I knew it was private and that we were there as guests.
That evening I found myself, at the age of 12 or so I guess, in a big circle of boys seated in a large hall. The leader explained the game. Every boy was to be a state in the US. Whomever was 'it' had a rolled up newspaper and was to smack a boy on the head if the name of his state was called. But if that boy could stand up and say the name of another state before he got smacked, then he forced the boy who was 'it' to remember which boy that was and run over and smack him. Sometimes a boy wouldn't know his state had been called, or when called didn't stand and speak fast enough, or would even say the name of his own state or the state of the boy who was 'it'. If so, the newspaper would come down on his head and he would be 'it'. It was a kind of pseudo-intellectual form of duck, duck goose. I had never seen it played before, nor since, until this weekend at Lake Arrowhead where I was the leader.
It was a snow trip weekend, and Boy and I went up with the Joneses. Mr. Jones was the leader of the adults and our contingent of 22 some odd scouts. We were joined there by 4 or 5 other somewhat smaller troops. We had our own monstrous and new bunkhouse. The order of the day was sledding. There was at least 16 inches of new snow everywhere. The sun was out in the cloudless crisp and still air. It was perfect weather. So on day one, as soon as we finished lunch, we found the right hill and began building the jump we would soon christen 'The Backbreaker'.
Some time after your 30th birthday and somebody half your age dunks on you, you start growing a new sense. Call it the smart step. The old man knows the shortest distance between two points through complexities that the young man attacks with brute zigzag force. It's particularly evident in racquetball and I've seen golf hustling up close. Very similar. In general, the old man smart step sense gives one premonitions when physical activity of young men begin to encroach on blooper territory. Even in the absence of the siren call, "Hey everybody, check this out!" we can smell disaster. Understand that women do not posses this sense at all. It's because they've never been the idiot boy - they don't experience pain as a challenge, imminent bodily danger as a thrill or defiance of death as a victory.
My smart step sense was in park this weekend, because I too wanted to hit the slope. And I did.
The approach was about 50 short feet on a 30% slope. Since most of us had saucers with no means of control, it was decided that we would make a chute. The chute consisted of low walls of compacted snow on either side reaching 12 feet up the slope from the end of the jump. The jump itself was a simple four foot drop. We even had the nerve to give it a lip. Think Wide World of Sports agony of defeat. Irresistible.
If you keep your feet in the saucer and hit the jump just right, a 120 pound teenaged boy will get a good half second of air and 20 feet of distance down the slope. Half the time, the boys went cockeyed separating themselves from the saucer and doing foot, elbow and faceplants in the snow beneath the jump. Sometimes they'd miss the entire ramp forcing observers to jump over them as they came careening down the spectator side. But enough times, good enough for the guy with the camera and lightning reflexes to get great shots, the boys came flying down with a thud right on target. Bam! Ouch! Whooo! Even us old guys with various disk abnormalities and compressions took a shot, me more than a few.
Only a select number in the sweetspot of age and condition continued to walk normally the rest of the day. The smaller boys wiped out catastrophically and shied away. The older men calculated once or twice was enough. The rest, including Boy, fetched themselves and their instruments of calamitous conveyance up and down the hill all afternoon.
I need another Motrin. I can't wait until next year.
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